Friday, September 21, 2012

On not really wanting to sit through Einstein on the Beach

Sigh. This weekend marks the final performances of Einstein on the Beach at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

And I really thought I was going to go.

But somehow I just don't seem to be able to make myself.

I don't really want to see it, you see. I just feel as if I should. After all, Robert Wilson wound up imploding into a kind of pissy avant-garde Liberace. (I know - the old queen finally came out of the closet; big deal.) The idea of visual art as theatre has led to a fringe scene of slow, pretentious dumb shows, but little else. And I've already heard much of the music, and like almost all of Philip Glass, it starts out fun but gets old fast. And of course the scientific ignorance of Wilson's modernist-mystical bull is perennially irritating - all that clueless downtown-zen crapola about Einstein always drives me crazy.

I'd really rather be here, and see something new and interesting. But when will I get a chance to sit through four-and-a-half hours of Wilson's silly but striking imagery again?

What can I say but "stay tuned"?

[Update - I stayed in town to see King Lear at Trinity and Paris Commune at ArtsEmerson.]